My friends and I had a rule that we adopted back in high school (wow...that was a long time ago). If we didn't like each others girlfriends, we were to speak up and say something. ONLY once though. That was it. One time we were obligated to tell a friend, 'What are you doing!? She's X.' After that, keep our mouth shut. Then when it didn't work, we got to say I told you so and rub it in.

I find that to be good strategy in life. Voice your disagreement or opinion on a subject, share your concerns with your family and friends, and then move on with your life. If you harp on a subject again and again, you come off preachy, condescending, and in the end do more harm than good. It is after all their life.

We live in the information age. Information is free and available to all (with internet access). If someone is unwilling to do a basic Google search (which is where 90% of us started this journey) then they don't want to change. No amount of brow beating will change that.

A lot of extremely religious people feel an obligation to save their fellow humans from a fiery hell. They knock on your door on weekends.

A lot of vegans feel an obligation to save their fellow humans (and the animals) from the horrible health affects of eating animal products. They force handouts on you outside restaurants.

Don't be these people. Proselytizing never improves a relationship. It's quite possible that your friend (hopefully not ex - apologizing helps) is now immunized against paleo. Think about how you feel when someone tries to save you from the horrid affects of eating paleo.

It doesn't matter that you are trying to help them. Everyone who feels the need to change another is sure that they are going to help them. Live life your way, for yourself. Don't start this discussion. If someone is interested, they will ask you. Don't overwhelm them. Keep it short and sweet.

Context is crucial here. Did you initiate the argument, or did she inquire about your dietary choices beforehand? Diet is as sensitive a topic as politics and religion because most people feel it implies a lot about their character; how disciplined they are, how informed, etc. Pair that with the relevance of the "obesity crisis" and modern health crisis and you've got one heck of a sh-tstorm on the horizon if you open that can of worms (they're Paleo, no worries).

Changes in diet and lifestyle can (and do) often have a tremendously beneficial impact on peoples' lives, should they choose to endure the stresses of sustaining major alterations to habits ingrained from the first time they savored a Carvel cake-batter Carvelanche with gramps. What is food? A social facilitator, a drug, a source of nutrients and energy? The answer is yes, depending on the way you look at it.

This woman likely has reservations and concerns about her dietary choices that are only augmented by her own diseased state. She's scared, and when you jump into the picture with a radically alternative viewpoint, you're causing MAJOR cognitive dissonance and making things very unpleasant for her.

The bottom line is this: even if she would benefit from the changes you suggest, it's important that you first gauge her receptivity to change. If she's clearly stuck in her ways, then it'll take a lot more than giving a Paleo-preaching seminar to shift her viewpoint. She is looking at you through biased lenses; when you attack her diet, you attack her core make-up, her intelligence, her knowledge.

Be gentle and be wary, she's in a tough spot and she knows it.

If you knew she wouldn't take it well, then why did you continue talking? That's not respectful of another person and his or her choices.

At the risk of sounding harsh, it seems that building your "help" numbers is more important than friendship. Which is fine if that's where you want to go with it. But IMO, building those numbers is as much, if not more, about making yourself feel good as it is about helping them. And that's the boundary: Are you genuinely doing it for your friend ... or are you doing it so you can be the mighty paleo savior?

Was it worth losing a friend over?

My wife and kids eat SAD/neolithic and I was very zealous 2 years ago. It only hardened them against me. I don't talk about food much any more. It's not worth the trouble. Anyone who is interested in food and health can find this information quite easily.

As Dr. Harris stated in his getting started post:

"So eat what you want. This is simply free advice that has worked very well for me and at least hundreds of patients and readers. I'm not trying to save the world, as I find it generally does not want saving."

hmmmm I'm more interested in being effective than right. There's a difference.

You have an obligation to yourself only, imo. I think you know that actually and are aware, as you say, that your boundaries are muddied. Great. Something to work on in yourself! A good thing.

You can only change yourself. Period Its not your job to "spread the good word" or save others. I agree that there is a religious zeal to your description of what you do.

Self righteous indignation is a huge turn off to me personally and to many. Even if I believed what you were saying or wanted the information, if the delivery was aggressive or arrogant, I would write you off as someone with lack of ability to communicate effectively and wouldn't listen. I'm just being honest here. Nobody likes a "know it all".

You seem to be very well intentioned. I bet you will figure out a way to improve your delivery.

Best of luck.

I just (as in last week) finished a master's in nutrition. Imagine how I feel in terms of wanting to proselytize to family, friends, and coworkers, with their endless stream of obesity, diabetes, autoimmunity, prescription meds, and on and on.

But my policy is to just keep my darn yap shut. If they want my help, they'll ask for it. (And starting in a few weeks, they can make an appointment and pay me for it, so it's their loss if they didn't pick my brain when it was free!)

Hehheh...mostly kidding. I'm always happy to talk food & health, but only if asked.

PaleoBarbie, how timely! I just brought the Paleo topic up again with my sister, who is 300# or is it closer to 400#...I don't know.

I've been Paleo for 1 1/2 yrs but only had 25# to lose.

First mention was just that. Seconcd mention was a "you should read the books" and sent some links to jump-start it until she could get the books from the library.

Hadn't seen her in a couple of months, and when I saw her the other day trying to get up from kneeling off the floor, I almost cried.

I called her the next morning and coaxed her to read. Then the excuses started - high cholesterol can't be good, family won't go for it... So I tried the "try it for 30 days" gig and told her to tell me specifically which parts she wanted scienitific studies on.

I emailed to follow up a day later and she responed by saying she was going to clean out the fridge and go shopping that day!

When I did a status check 2 days later, she said she hadn't for various reasons.

She is seeing a therapist, mental illness runs in the family, as well as depression, etc.

Barbie, like you, I want to share something that actually works! Like when we shared going chemical free in the house, or...when the kids were younger, we talked through issues.

But somehow, she won't even read about it. It hit me when I realized she doesn't want to try to learn or read. Co-dependency, fear, independent, doesn't want a younger sister telling her what to do. I don't know.

I will say that I felt better, in a weird way, when I hear Robb Wolf say this week that he'd battled his very own parents over healthy eating! I Googled - Paleo Diet: How Do I Convince Someone to Try It?. Here's the post http://robbwolf.com/2012/04/04/paleo-diet-convince-it/.

So, like you, I kinda knew I probably shouldn't bring up Paleo in the first place, but when you love someone, it behooves me to try to help. So the ball is in her court now. She's intelligent enough to research it herself now. I wished her luck. What else can you say?

To quote every therapist ever, "Use 'I' statements in place of 'you' statements."

But seriously, no disagreement over health, diet, fitness, etc. is worth losing a friendship. Life is too short (and much shorter if you don't adhere to the paleo way)!

:)

I'm new to Paleo and I finally got recruited because the only people I knew who were Paleo looked FANTASTIC and everyone else looked okay. It really irritated me because I didn't want to be paleo. But all they had to do was say, "I'm paleo; these are my abs." I still resisted for years because I love grains and dairy so very very much....

OMgosh, this questions and all of the answers have been so eye-opening to ME. I am annoying and bossy. I must stop.

The advice I loved the most here is from Karen who said, "Proselytizing never improves a relationship."

I am going to shut the heck up unless asked from now on.

I find it's better to tell people what I'm doing, and how it's working for me, rather than criticise them. With family, I'm a bit more direct, though. But to me me, it's an awareness at how much I hate proselytizing. As an atheist, I absolutely can't stand when religious people sy things that imply that they know better, and that if I simply believed what they do, well, I'd be a better person.

When people ask about my way of eating, I tell them a little bit, then give them websites to look up and read on their own.

Think that is quite an interesting question.

I agree that people should know about Paleo but it is still up to them to go for it or not. Sometimes it's just not the right time for people to make a drastic change in their life and trying to force feed them Paleo could only lead to some sort of negative associations or even flat out rejection of the concept because they were pushed into a corner.

I just let them know why I think it works, how well it works for me and my other friends who jumped on the Paleo wagon. Once they are ready for change or encounter the concept again in a more open minded setting they will remember that a well meaning friend once told them about the primal lifestyle as well which they might perceive as an additional argument to give it a try.

There's no right answer to your question. Some people will come around if you beat them up enough. Some will never talk to you again if you don't switch to their diet! Everybody's different. There are a few people I'm working on, and I have a strategy tuned to each. But there are also many people who I'm not even going to try to approach with this, because what's the point?

I will say, though, that direct people like you make things happen in this world. Maybe one of those people I'm handling with kit gloves would have come around had I been more direct.

So who knows? Don't beat yourself up, keep promoting paleo the best you can, but the lesson is to tailor your pitch (or lack of) to your audience. This won't be the last person you alienate -- my modest pitches still haven't always gone over very will. That's life.